large ears, sniffs, snorts, and the schooner Tamerlane forged expectorations, he prognosti- through the waters, plunging cated a blow. her bowsprit under every few seconds. Somewhere about what the soldiers called twenty-four hours, it arrived. A sudden shriek of wind, creaking and groaning of gear, and a flapping of canvas like rapid fire from a duck-gun, announced its arrival. The skipper had remained on deck; he double-manned the great tiller, and bellowed for all hands. His roar carried above the howling of the squall and the crash of the seas against the little ship's bluff bows. Soon enough the stocky ungainly-looking seamen had taken in the jib, and were labouring like demons to closereef main and foresails. The soldiers lent a hand, in the intervals of doubling to the lee-rail to feed the fishes. Here a group of four or five hauled unaccustomedly on a throat halyard, and there a couple helped to secure the upturned skiff to the cabin roof. The wind was violent and the shallowness of the water had caused short steep seas that tried both vessel and crew harder than would have the long rollers of the ocean. All hands wished for the dawn as they clung to the sides of their rough bunks. At last it came, and with it a moderation of the blast. Though the wind dropped, so did the temperature. The skipper opined that their troubles were not yet over, even as the seas diminished during the forenoon. They soon got a glimpse of the sun, and the ship became steady enough for a fire to be lit, to cook a sorely-needed meal. Xenia Dimitrievna appeared again to do the honours of the cuddy, with a brave face in spite of a certain paleness about her normally sun-kissed cheeks. By noon all had eaten, and the schooner rose and fell over the lazy swells, once more under a full spread of canvas. None of the soldiers had seen more than a moderate blow, and from the decks of a ten-thousand-ton ship. In this creaking ill-found cockleshell the situation seemed awe-inspiring as the seas creamed and surged along the lee-rail, and as mast whipped and shrouds sang, whilst the cross-trees seemed nearly to dip into the very crests of the seas. Matters eased when canvas was reduced. Even so, under close-reefed mainsail and foresail and forestaysail, ditions. A certain murkiness of the surface of that central Asian sea now developed into a very definite fog. The Naukhoda greeted this new trouble with strange oaths. He received little sympathy from the subaltern and the rest of the party: in fact the Risaldar told him plainly that he, being the chief mariner, was clearly responsible for the weather con A couple of hours or so so passed thus. Then one of the soldiers, who had been crouching on look-out by the heel of the bowsprit, came quietly after to the subaltern. He invited him to listen to the northward, over the weatherbow. A word silenced the talk in their own craft, and soon the subaltern was able to hear a slow steady throb. The wind had now dropped abrupt termination to his real to a faint breeze that barely task. He reflected that he gave the schooner steerage way ought to avoid an encounter, as she rolled, booms rattling especially with a steamer that and gear creaking, over the was certain to carry an armaslow oily swells. ment many times more powerful than the rifles of his tiny force. His mission was much more important than any success they could hope to gain. Still, he had little choice in the matter. If the fog should lift, as it threatened to do, the weakest steamer could destroy him at sight, with the stem, if not by gun-fire or torpedo. The boldest course was the safest. He would instruct the skipper to put the schooner alongside the steamer and attack her. The subaltern realised that this was a grave decision to take, but, on the other hand, he knew how much stomach the Reds had for a hand-to-hand fight. The Naukhoda could hear it too, and after a while announced that it was the beat of a propeller. In a few minutes an occasional thud and clank added itself to the regular rhythm. Then all was silent again. The fog seemed to have shut off the sound like a drop-curtain. This was exciting. In that area the ship they heard could hardly be a friendly one. Our ships had no business there. Before they sailed our S.N.O.'s secretary had informed the subaltern that all enemy ships except two were duly accounted for, and those two were far away on the north-western coasts. Still, the approaching vessel was more likely to be an enemy than a friend: possibly the ice of the Bielya estuary had melted prematurely and released one or two of the craft known to be frozen up in it. The subaltern hardly liked the prospect of a possible VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCC. In a whisper he called up the Risaldar, his three section commanders, and the old Turkoman sailor. His orders were brief enough. The soldiers were to be under cover of the weather-rail, with bayonets fixed and grenades detonatored. One section of the three was to remain in the schooner, using their fire to assist the other two, the boarding sections. The Risaldar was to take charge of this covering fire party, and to use every effort to pick off any man who seemed to be a leader amongst the enemy, and especially the crews of any gun or machinegun that might attempt to open fire. F2 The Turkoman crew were to stand by with their sabres drawn to back up the boarders. Two, however, including the mate, were to have lashings in their hands to secure the schooner to the enemy as soon as their sides touched. Two more were detailed to the engine-room, to prevent the engineers handling their throttles or reversing-gear. The subaltern stood by the skipper's elbow, who himself held the tiller. They moved slowly so, almost drifting for ten minutes, that seemed as many hours. Suddenly the clamour seemed to be turned on as by a tap. From the invisible vessel, above the slow vibrations of her engine, came shouts and the gibber of harsh voices. They could hear snatches of seemingly drunken song, and then quite clearly a scream of Ya Bolsheviki." There was no time to guess what it meant. The subaltern glanced at the row of set faces and fixed bayonets along the low bulwark, then a black shape sheered up out of the fog, and they caught the sickly sweet smell of half-burnt Mazut fuel. What followed came briskly enough. The schooner's masts rattled again as her sides met the black steel of the enemy. The men were aboard like a flash, and a volley broke out from the covering section. By great good-fortune the enemy's sides were but three or four feet higher than the schooner's rail. The subaltern found a broad savage yellowish face in front of him. He remembered distinctly, but very slowly it seemed, how he ought to aim at his opponent's waist on these occasions. Somehow the broad yellow face floated alone in a sort of mist, and it had no waist. He then became conscious of the smell of cordite from his own pistol, and the face, which had till then filled all his world, suddenly was not. Then matters cleared up a little. The Risaldar was lugging his sword from out of the blue-and-white striped jersey that covered the chest of a Red sailor who had jumped to the breech of the enemy's midship gun. The subaltern's own men were thrusting at his elbows to right and left, pressing a crowd of bluejackets towards the bows of their ship. The schooner was lashed to the other vessel's stern, but the bow fasts seemed to have parted. Two loud crashes roared out, as grenades were thrown down the hatches of the engine-room and stokehold. All at once resistance melted away. Two or three grimy sailors shrieked as the long bayonets lunged into their bodies that crouched beneath gun mountings - or torpedotubes. The subaltern's first desire, after the din had quietened, was to indulge in recriminations with the Risaldar for taking his party off the schooner and aboard the enemy. The bodies sprawled messily over Risaldar anticipated him by the gratings of the startingpointing out that as the bow- platform. fast had parted, the vessels' foreparts had swung away from each other, so that the fire of the covering party had become masked by the boarders themselves. The captured ship proved to be a large sea-going torpedoboat, and though she was of antique build, the soldiers were very pleased to have captured her from a small schooner. The wounds of the attackers were trivial. Afzal bared his brawny shoulder for a swab of iodine and field dressing where a pistol-bullet had ploughed a neat furrow along the deltoid. Xenia, to the subaltern's annoyance, appeared with a knife-slash on the back of her hand. He had forgotten to make arrangements to keep her below during the fight. The Turkoman sailor, whose nose had stopped the flight of Xenia's belaying-pin the day before, now had that same organ converted into a pulpy mass by a blow from the butt of a rifle. He was at that moment being held down by four of his friends in order to prevent him from wreaking summary vengeance on the pinioned sailor who had done the deed. Sentries had already been posted over the various hatchways, and the subaltern observed that the one over the engine-room was unnecessary, since both engineers had been killed by a grenade, and their The stokehold was empty. A glance, however, into the tiny wardroom showed several occupants. First up the ladder there came to meet the British officer a naval lieutenant, whom he had known in former years at the Russian Embassy in London. This was indeed a strange encounter, and the sailor made several gallant attempts to kiss the subaltern. Next came a tall, broad-shouldered young officer in the khaki serge jacket and blue pipings of a Guards regiment. He was introduced by the sailor as Prince Rokhalski. The third inhabitant of the little den did not seem very keen to leave it. As he hesitated, the sailor let drive with a hurricane of emblematical Russian, and then the figure crawled on hands and knees to the ladder. As it turned upwards on the bottom rungs, the light, striking downwards, showed a broad yellow face, now tinged with the greenygrey of abject terror. Thick lips slavered and dripped below a fleshy nose. The high cheekbones and double eyelids betrayed the Mongol, and the object gibbered to itself in Yiddish as it climbed and floundered on the ladder. Helped by a rude hand on the scruff of the neck, it arrived in a cowering heap on the deck. The sailor explained briefly to the subaltern that this was a Red naval commissar, bound most useful stokers were in on a special mission to Bielovodsk port. This excursion was arranged for the execution of Prince Rokhalski, the passenger. The commissar did not know that the Imperial officers knew that the Guardsman's fate had been arranged, so he was allowed to travel in the wardroom, as if all had been straightforward. The wretch, who had many murders to his credit, did not seem to need a sentry, so a clove hitch secured his wrists behind his back. Then all four officers and the Naukhoda made their way over the littered steel decks, slippery with blood, to where the fo'c'sle hatch opened under the forward whaleback. There Private Bloggs was busy bumping the butt of his rifle on to the fingers of unrestful inmates as they tried to climb out, whilst he threatened, in a curious Persian jargon of his own, to bayonet the first man up. The Russian officers explained that several of the sailors were loyal and could be trusted, and the naval lieutenant, Mitchmanoff, undertook to separate the sheep from the goats as they came up on deck. Accordingly a row of grimy figures, still clad in the blue-black serge, blue-and-white striped jerseys, and gold-lettered caps of the old Imperial Navy, were soon lashed to the stanchions of the weather rail, whilst the loyalist force was increased by the useful addition of seven seamen. Three cluded: useful because they understood the steam blast of the Mazut burners in the little craft's furnaces. The prisoners amounted to seventeen, including the commissar, of whom three were badly wounded, and five of their dead lay on the deck. The bodies were quickly overboard, and it was decided to batten down the captives in a small compartment of the wardroom, which had been a smallarms store. The Russian officers expressed a wish to deal with the commissar more adequately and promptly. The subaltern declined to be a party to any out of hand hangings, but Prince Rokhalski explained that a Field General Court Martial might be convened by the senior officer present. No sooner said than done, and the three officers sat to decide Isaac Ruvovski's fate Several sailors gave evidence, and the issue was not long in doubt. Then there was a hitch. The loyalist bosun's mate pointed out that the torpedoboat's yard-arm was far from strong enough to support the seventeen or eighteen stone of the stumpy but obese prisoner, even if the signal halliards, the only longish line available, would stand it. Mitchmanoff suggested that if the gig were lowered into the water and passed astern on a painter, the vacant davits would provide an excellent |
